Softball: After 50 years of winning, Sonny Termine is receiving softball's greatest honor

WEST NORRITON — At his home in Norristown, Sonny Termine lives a quieter life than in days of old. During the TNT championship years of the ’90s, the basement of his corner row home was packed with winners — hard working players, friends, family — who gathered Friday night for cold-tapped beers and rounds of pool.

Like the Chicago Bulls of their era, TNT was the softball team of the decade. They won five Norristown Softball League titles from 1993-99 (and again in 2009) with the 1994 team named the fifth best NSL team of the 20th century. In 2005 and 2010, they were senior softball champions on the National, World and Olympic level.

The team was Termine’s baby. He went out and got the best players possible, because he wanted his team to win, and they did. There have been 50 TNT players inducted in the Norristown Softball Hall of Fame.

After winning every honor, every trophy, every tournament and every championship possible, TNT disbanded. And yet at 67 Termine still plays and yes, Termine still wants to win. In March 2014 Termine will be inducted into the Amateur Softball League Hall of Fame as a player-manager, the greatest honor on a national level that a softball player can receive.

“When I was a young kid, I wanted to play the game and I wanted to win,” Termine said. “I didn’t care about playing with a bunch of friends, it didn’t matter.”

Termine stands about 5-foot-6 with a messy head of grey hair plastered to his forehead from wearing one of his hundreds of ball caps he stows away for the right time and place. He is light on his feet and has the energy of a man half his age and he’s just seven years off of quadruple bypass surgery that sidelined him for “maybe six weeks.” Wrinkles form around his eyes and mouth from years of smiling and laughing, but his muscles remain tight and defined. On the outside of his calves are two tattoos: on the right is the symbol of his famed TNT ball club, and on the left calf is a bat making contact with text that reads “Play Hard or Go Home.”

Early on in his career, Termine found a sport he could really play. The pace of the game, the big ball he could hit “a country mile,” and the competition were all factors in his passion.

Sitting alongside his youngest of six children, Joseph, and longtime friend and competitor Sully “Heels” Gelet, who at 82 runs and maintains the NSL through meticulous attention to detail, the three laugh about past games and about Termine’s incessant need to be the best.

“We’ve always been very highly competitive,” Gelet said. “It’s always been a friendship — adversarial on the field and friends off the field.”

Gelet and Termine, who were both pitchers, competed against each other for over 40 years on the field or from a coaching standpoint.

“He did everything within the rules to win a game,” including a game in which Gelet had recently come off knee surgery with Termine playing the style of “let’s hit the ball back at Heels,” Gelet said.

“It’s more about being friendly with people and having a smile on your face. Smiling is contagious,” Termine said. “Winning was always number one, but when you went through the line shaking hands, the game was over.”

Gelet said that despite any issues on the field, they always discussed any transgressions over a beer and moved on.

“Every day is another day,” he said.

An intense rivalry fueled his passion to be victorious, and thus when he formed TNT, Termine wrangled up all the talent he could find. When he was 36, Termine would have his team show up in the rain and made the umpire sign the sheet that said his team showed up and the other team didn’t. At one point, he played in seven different leagues which would find him driving from one game to another to another in a single evening, but always playing his hardest.

Over the course of 50 years, the bad taste of losing was something Termine could never settle for. One year Termine had some of the softball players enter into a flag football league, but not just any flag football league — these were tough dudes who’d break your nose, pick you up, slam you down, pluck the flag and kick you for good measure as told by Steve Dimitry, a longtime player and friend of Termine’s.

“He told all the softball players after we got killed that first season to ‘just stay home and stay healthy,’” Dimitry said, who was the victim of a vicious clothesline that broke his nose that year. “He then went out and got all the biggest, baddest football players and won that league the next year.”

Bowling and darts were no different.

“I’d just come out for a couple beers and Sonny would be trying to bowl 300,” Dimitry said. “They won the dart league, the bowling league, but he never sacrificed his friendships with people to win.”

Five years ago on June 10, 2008, Sonny’s wife Linda passed away. Together they had three children — Sunshine, Augustus and Joseph — to go with the three children they had from previous marriages, Charles, Peter and Michael. She was his biggest fan, always at the field. He helped create a women’s TNT league in which she played and after their second win in ten games the girls would ride around town beeping the horn in celebration.

“I remember one of the championship games and she was in the bleachers with all of the kids. She was rooting for me, and I could clearly hear her holler, ‘Come on, Sonny! You can do it! Don’t pop up this time!’” Termine laughs. “I’ll never forget that, but that was Linda, she’d root for you but she had her own words.”

In years since, Termine’s passion for the game has only gotten stronger. Whereas at one time he’d plan out a day with his wife around his softball games, now he just gets up and goes. Recently, Termine’s son Joseph called up his dad minutes before a game in which they were a man short and in danger of forfeiting. Termine came right out, went 4-4, and they won the game.

“It’s a long and hard journey, but to be as successful as he is, is just amazing,” Joseph Termine said. “He’s always stayed a champion.”

Currently, Sonny Termine plays on the Marshalls softball team in the 60-plus Montgomery County Senior Softball league. He stretches under the shade of a tree for 45 minutes in preparation for the seven-inning contest. On the field he pitches and is as nimble as a jackrabbit on grounders up the middle in which he fields with precision. In the particular game he was pitching he got hit around, and after an outfielder misplayed a fly ball that allowed two more runs to score, Termine took a moment to rest his hands on his hips before throwing the next pitch. In the top of the next inning, Termine cheered that same player on at the plate with great enthusiasm, and after suffering the loss he greeted the opponents with hugs and handshakes.

“I understand losing now. I used to take a loss home with me, or I’d be up all night before a big game,” Termine said. “Now it’s not all about winning, it’s more about having fun and staying healthy.”

In March when Termine will be inducted into the ASA Hall of Fame, he had the option of being inducted as a sponsor, a player or a manager. After much deliberation he’s decided to go in as a manager.

“The greatest gifts in life are friends,” Termine said. “When you go in as a manager, it speaks a lot for everybody who you had the relationship of being their coach and their friend.

“In my situation I think it would be selfish to go in as a player. I wasn’t a superstar, but I always gave 100 percent effort and when a guy gives me 100 percent effort, he’s on my A-team.”